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I nodded. “You’re right. I have to go.”
I tried to turn, but Damian’s voice once again bellowed out over everything. “Sorry! You waited too long!” My head snapped around, so my eyes met his, a dark smile on his lips. “Everyone, please make sure she can’t leave.”
Students filled in around me, and I ducked and tried to run out. This was the first time I’d actively acted like a coward since the first day, when Damian had me begging him not to tell Asher what had happened between us in the bathroom.
There I was again, acting the part of the little lamb and handing all my power over to him. All the training in the world couldn’t stop this kind of warfare. Not unless I wanted to fight just as dirty as he did.
Arms grabbed hold of me, dragging me back into the cafeteria.
“Let go of her!” Justin yelled.
Someone cried out at the same time I heard a loudpop, and I imagined it was Justin fighting to get to me.
“Damian!” Luna shouted. “She was leaving, you bastard! This isn’t right. Let her go!”
As I was spun around and dragged to stand in the spot I’d been in moments before, I watched him shrug. Luna and Justin were just as secured as I was. None of us could escape.
“Sorry! She had multiple chances. Three months of them, actually. I wasverykind to give her one last shot, but she hesitated.” He shrugged again before sliding a finger under the lip of the packet. “I guess next time she’ll learn to listen. She’s very stubborn, you know.”
“You fuckingcowar—” my scream was cut off when rough hands tightened around my restrained arms, and someone forced a piece of duct tape over my mouth.
Immediately, panic raced through my body. It happened so quickly, there wasn’t time to control it or stop it. No breathing technique in the world could stop this now. I was completely and totally at his mercy, and I was having a full-blown anxiety attack right there in front of everyone. My weakness bared for all to see.
“So, the story is, I hired a private investigator a few weeks ago because I wanted to seeexactlywhat the lost little lamb was hiding from all of us. I mean, we have arightto know who we’re going to school with. Who is sleeping in our dorms. Who is sitting with us in the cafeteria. Right?” He yelled the last part, and everyone screamed, “Right!” along with him.
“I held off on opening this. I wanted it to be just as much of a surprise for me as it was for all of you. I thought we could enjoy this together.” He smiled as his eyes met mine.
As my heart thumped wildly in my chest, and I fought against the many people holding me back, tears burned the backs of my eyes. There was no way this would end well, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. All I could to was stand and watch in horror as he destroyed my life. As he quite possibly signed my death warrant.
He pulled out a stack of papers, and he turned the first page over. “Oh, my. What do we have here? Adoption records. Temperance Anne Grace Wilder. Born in Elizabethtown, Indiana.” He shuffled through. “Boring, boring, boring. Ah! Here we go!” he said as he flipped to the next page. “It seems our littleTemperancehasn’t been so honest with us, everyone!”
I swallowed hard, my eyes wide, praying my nose would clog, and I’d die right there from suffocation. Well, if my heart didn’t explode in my chest first. The dizziness made me feel like I’d pass out and breathing so hard didn’t help. I felt nervous sweat dripping down my forehead, neck, and chest.
“Medical records. Death certificates. Hmm, what else? Oh, a link. Nowthiscould be fun. Let’s see what this is, shall we? Just a second, everyone.”
Oh, my fucking God!The way he was dragging this out, giving only tiny little tidbits of information while teasing the crowd that fed on his excited energy waskillingme!Spit it out already! Put me out of my fucking misery, you fucking bastard!
The entire room echoed with the chorus of hundreds of phones chirping, dinging, and vibrating all at once. Everyone pulled their phones from their pockets and renewed anxiety hit me like a truck.
What could it possibly be?
“I just uploaded a link on Crestchat,” Damian said. “Everyone click on that now, please. I don’t know what it is, but it must be pretty interesting!”
A hand was thrust in front of my face with a cell phone in it, turned on its side so the video it played would be full size. I’d pulled my neck trying to fight my attackers off, so I couldn’t turn to see who held it from behind me, but I didn’t care. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was what appeared on the screen.
Full color HD footage taken from the corner of a church lit up the screen. I was suddenly hit with the memory of Pastor Montgomery and my dad talking about putting in cameras to make sure the place stayed protected after a few churches in the county were robbed. It was about six months before the attack, so I didn’t even remember…
Until now.
I saw myself sitting in the back row with my father, though I could only see our side profiles. I was playing on my phone, my head resting on his shoulder while he read the bible. Waiting for service to start. It was just how I remembered it that one night in my dream. I even saw my dad look over and point at the phone as we talked about the messages. The body language was the same as it was in the dream.
“Ugh, boring!” Damian shouted, and I growled as I struggled again. “Oh, wait. Skip forward to 10:12. That’s apparently when something good happens.”
Somethinggood?!
The tears burning my eyes spilled over as rage replaced the anxiety I felt a thousand times over.
If I fucking get loose, I’llmurderyou! I’ll fucking kill you and everything you love! I’ll burn your goddamn house to the ground with you in it!